


a fiercer gale

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Manipulative Relationship, Manipulative Sansa, Post-Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-16 12:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9271163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: He blinked and peered at her, hands folded behind his back. When he stepped toward her, she didn’t step back. There was no stepping back with Petyr Baelish, she’d found, just an endless circling that she could choose to play to or not. “That was quite the display in there,” he said and she didn’t need to ask what he meant. “Little Lyanna Mormont rallying men five times her age and ten times her weight. I wonder if history will remember it.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AFTanith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AFTanith/gifts).



> Title from “Amavi” by Edmund Clarence Stedman.

“You asked me once,” Lord Baelish said, his steps a whisper against the cold floor. The rushes strewn across the granite barely stirred beneath his slippered feet, but Sansa didn’t startle at his pronouncement. His voice was low enough that it didn’t carry or echo against the walls, like he realized he was intruding and wanted to mitigate that fact as best he could, but not enough to refrain from bothering her entirely. Then again, he never had shown even the slightest restraint in that regard. The question now was whether he had followed her or whether it was a coincidence he’d chosen to take advantage of. Who could say; sometimes she wondered if Baelish even knew. “What it was I wanted, my lady, but what is it _you_ want?”

Sansa had forgotten the halls’ tendency to speak back and shivered as Baelish’s words found their bounced and twisted cousins, _what is it you want_ becoming so much more than the innocent-sounding inquiry he’d made. So many questions ran through her mind. Why now? Why Jon? Why could she still hear her family’s bannermen’s shouts in her ears? _The king in the North! The king in the North!_ And why did it bother her?

How had Baelish guessed?

She brushed her hands down the front of her dress, the fabric nothing like what she’d worn in King’s Landing. There, everything was soft and smooth silk, brocades that slid easily between the fingers. Here, she fought the heavy wool that hung from her frame, her fingers catching on the occasional distasteful imperfections in the cloth. In retrospect, this was why she’d wanted to leave Winterfell. Perhaps not this precisely, but it was close enough to the truth that she couldn’t deny it symbolized a part of the whole. Everything here was born of cold violence. What she hadn’t known before was this: they were armor, too, these unfashionable gowns. What she hadn’t known before, too: everything in King’s Landing was born equally of cold violence. With a deep breath, she turned. Habit dictated that she smile, but a conscious decision wiped the residue of false good humor from her mouth. She might have had to pretend with him, but it was in a different way than courtesy demanded. It was, in its own strange way, a relief.

“Lord Baelish,” she said. And she did not curtsy.

He blinked and peered at her, hands folded behind his back. When he stepped toward her, she didn’t step back. There was no stepping back with Petyr Baelish, she’d found, just an endless circling that she could choose to play to or not. “That was quite the display in there,” he said and she didn’t need to ask what he meant. “Little Lyanna Mormont rallying men five times her age and ten times her weight. I wonder if history will remember it.”

“What?” Sansa asked. Baelish sometimes spoke in non-sequiturs. She thought maybe he did it to get the upper hand over others, but right now, she didn’t much care one way or the other what hand he had, nor over whom.

The corner of Baelish’s mouth jumped, the only kind of smile a man who wasn’t willing to commit to anything could give. He opened his hands, exposing the clean lines of his palms. Another lie. “History often forgets the truly inspiring figures. It forgets why things happened and how. It forgets the people most important to shaping it. It forgets and forgets and forgets and so we keep making the same mistakes.”

Sansa thought back to her lessons, the many stories she’d heard over the years about her family, about the Baratheons, about war and peace and Lannisters who shit gold, but couldn’t die. Her time in King’s Landing disproved many things she’d thought she knew. Though she might have wanted to deny it, those stories were so beautiful, he wasn’t wrong exactly.

Baelish’s eyes sparkled with poorly suppressed mirth and Sansa might have called them pretty if she couldn’t see the calculations going on behind the amusement. _You don’t have to calculate with me_ , she thought, a wellspring of anger bubbling up behind her breastbone. _I can see through it_. “I was never a very good student of history,” she said, lifting her head to stare him in the eyes, allowing herself this moment of confrontation. Self-deprecating, she added, “I much preferred playing with dolls.”

“Is that not all life is?” He merely smirked and inclined his head, gesturing at the empty hallway around them. “Allow me to let you in on a secret: Jon Snow has just danced a roomful of men on strings. There is no difference between that and what you did growing up save the intent and the result.”

Baelish took another step forward, touched his hand to Sansa’s shoulder, only hesitating long enough to gauge her reaction or lack thereof. Her heart skipped and climbed her throat at the contact, though she knew it shouldn’t have. And though she ought to have moved away, she didn’t do that either. “I promised you the North.” He leaned in, the exhalation of each word brushing against her ear. His eyes never wavered from hers. “I would keep that promise to you if you will but ask.”

Her chest constricted and though she needed desperately to drag air into her lungs, she didn’t dare it. “He’s my brother.”

Baelish grasped her by both shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Stannis Baratheon was a brother.”

Scoffing, Sansa shook her head. “Jon’s a good man. He wouldn’t—”

“I’m not saying he would.” But he let everything else he might have said hang between them anyway. Good men made poor protectors. Bad men, too, but they spoke to her with honeyed words and made themselves useful to her. They might set her upon a dangerous path, but they gave her the means to take her own revenge, too. They had armies which could save the North from itself. And Sansa was tired of protectors regardless. She wanted to protect herself for once.

 _Take the step_ , he seemed to be saying without saying anything at all. She got the impression that he would wait out the Winter for her if that was what it took.

“I don’t want the Iron Throne.” Her fingers wrapped around his wrists as she tugged his hands free of her shoulders. She inspected those hands, brushed her thumbs across his knuckles. They were so smooth, the hands of a prince in a world without princes. These might, she thought, be the closest thing she would ever get to the life she’d dreamed for herself.

“I didn’t ask what you don’t want,” he answered, and, more daring, “Sansa.”

She closed her eyes briefly and pretended she lived in a world where securing her own safety didn’t require… this. Or the sense of relief that cascaded through her, cool and clear as water, now that she’d made a decision. _Take the step_.

“I want the seat of Winterfell.” Lifting one of his hands to her mouth, she pressed her lips against the base of his thumb, picked up the scent of the South on his skin, citrus and smoky spices. It wasn’t anything like how she’d thought this would go—not that anything in her life had gone the way it was supposed to—but his hand shook when she let released him and his eyes held a hint of wildness that frightened her not at all. Not now. _And you by my side,_ she didn’t say.

She didn’t have to.

All she had to say was his name.


End file.
